The legendary Oakland Raider quarterback, Ken Stabler, once told me a story about John Madden when I was researching a book about Stabler's life. In many ways, it was emblematic of who Madden was.
The story went like this. It was the late 1970s and the NFL was a vastly different game than the polished, high-tech product now. It was larger than life, full of personalities, and Madden, even then, was one of the more outsized ones. He was brilliant and funny and respected, things all immensely difficult to pull off simultaneously, but somehow Madden did, and would go on to do it once he entered the television booth.
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